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Former Presidents Obama, Clinton and Bush won’t attend Trump’s inaugural lunch
Former Presidents Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush will not attend President-elect Donald Trump’s traditional inaugural lunch.
Obama received an invitation but declined to attend, according to a source familiar with the matter. Clinton also was invited but does not plan to attend, according to a second source familiar with the matter, while Bush’s office said it was not tracking an invitation to the luncheon.
Former Secretary of State and first lady Hillary Clinton also received an invitation to the inaugural luncheon but will not attend, according to a third source familiar with the matter.
A spokesperson for Trump’s transition team did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the absences.
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All three former presidents, however, will attend Trump’s swearing-in ceremony earlier in the day, according to their teams. The former first ladies will also attend the swearing-in ceremony except for Michelle Obama, according to the Obamas’ office. No reason was provided. Michelle Obama also did not attend the funeral service last week for former President Jimmy Carter, making hers the only absence among all living current and former presidents and first ladies.
Inauguration Day is one of the only occasions when all former living presidents usually congregate to usher in the next administration. Trump, however, declined to attend President Joe Biden’s inauguration in 2021.
None of the living former presidents supported Trump’s candidacy. Bush did not make an endorsement, and Obama and Clinton actively campaigned for Vice President Kamala Harris.
The Clintons attended the luncheon in 2017 after Trump defeated Hillary Clinton. During the luncheon, he encouraged a standing ovation for her.
“I was very honored, very, very honored when I heard that President Bill Clinton and Secretary Hillary Clinton was coming today,” Trump said at the time.
The inaugural luncheon tradition stems from a lunch the Senate Committee on Arrangements hosted in 1897 for President William McKinley and guests at the Capitol, according to the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies (JCCIC), which hosts the luncheon.
In 1953, the JCCIC began hosting the luncheon for the incoming president and vice president and their guests. Politicians typically deliver speeches and toast the new administration.
2024’s Biggest Loser Was Barack Obama
From 2024’s vantage point, is there any way to look at Barack Obama’s legacy but as a tragic blight on American history?
s desperate, phony, and even dangerous of a campaign Democrats ran this year, and as embarrassing as the outcome was for all of them, nobody came out looking more pathetic than Barack Obama. From 2024’s vantage point, is there any way to look at his legacy but as a tragic blight on American history?
In the final months of the campaign, Obama seemed to know the outcome of the election would say just as much about him as it would about Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, or Donald Trump. And, like all realistic Democrats, he knew that the nominee he supported was on track to lose. His behavior in those days was nothing short of appalling.
Obama first stood by and said nothing when George Clooney, who I had no idea was Democrat royalty, announced in The New York Times that Biden should give up his reelection campaign, as if there was some obvious plan as to what the party would do in that event. Obama did nothing and said nothing as his former vice president was squeezed out, and then he offered what should go down in Democrat history as the most uncomfortable, underwhelming endorsement a former president has ever offered a subsequent nominee. Obama participated in a highly staged phone call with Harris and, with all the enthusiasm of a mortician, told her, “It appears that people feel very strongly that you need to be our nominee.”
It never got any better, and it climaxed in the shocking display of Obama belittling black men. Because he shared in their race (somewhat), Obama felt they should do as he said. “You’re coming up with all kinds of reasons and excuses,” he told them to their faces with his arms crossed and brow furrowed. “I’ve got a problem with that because part of it makes me think — and I’m speaking to men directly now — part of it makes me think that, well, you just aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president.” Obama literally wagged his finger to tell these grown men, “That’s not acceptable. This shouldn’t even be a question.”
If that weren’t crazed enough, he then trotted out wife Michelle to further nag male voters. “So fellas,” she said at a rally in Michigan, “before you cast your votes ask yourselves what side of history do you want to be on.” She said male “rage” is what could cost Democrats the election. “If we don’t get this election right,” she nagged, “your wife, your daughter, your mother — we as women will become collateral damage to your rage. So are you men prepared to look into the eyes of the women and children you love and tell them that you supported this assault on our safety?” (Can we get one of those overpaid consultants to advise women in politics that there’s nothing frank or authentic about referring to men as “fellas?”)
Generally speaking, Democrat men have never been accused of being too manly, but it remains a mystery as to who came up with the idea to browbeat them into voting for Kamala. If it was Obama’s idea, man has he lost his magic. And if it wasn’t his idea, man has he lost his magic.
“Hope and change” became, “Do what mommy and daddy said.”
Then Trump won decisively, the first Republican in 20 years to win the popular vote. It’s the second time Trump defeated the Obama-backed candidate and the second chance Trump has to reverse the havoc Obama and his legacy have wrought.
Consider that Obama’s supreme legislative achievement was a health insurance industry overhaul. The ultimate result has been higher prices and fewer insurance options. Obama supported Hillary Clinton as his successor, discouraging Biden. She was ended by Trump. In 2020, Biden became the Democrat nominee with the eventual support of Obama, only to preside over breakouts of foreign conflict, hyperinflation, rampant crime, and unmitigated chaos at the southern border, none of which was inevitable but in fact instigated by Biden’s agenda. Now voters are once again turning to Trump, the man who made his entry into the Obama-era of politics by demanding proof of Obama’s birth certificate, which Obama, the sitting president of the United States, responded to by publishing it. Sad!
America is done with him. Obama was 2024’s biggest loser.
The Most Politically Absurd Things Americans Had To Endure This Year
If this presidential election year taught us anything, it’s that there is no bottom in matters of the politically absurd.
Let’s face it, there was more than enough stupid to go around this year.
If 2024 taught us anything, it’s that there is no bottom in matters of the politically absurd. Remember, somebody thought it was a good idea for Joe Biden to debate Donald Trump. Fani Willis thought her deadbeat paramour Nathan Wade was worth every dime. And Kristi Noem believed her Old Yeller moment would be endearing. But then again someone in the Trump transition team thought the dog-killing South Dakota governor and close personal friend of Corey Lewandowski would make a fine Homeland Security secretary, so clearly there’s no accounting for taste.
Yes, our dunce cup runneth over in 2024. Here are just some of the dumbest things we Americans have had to endure over the earth’s latest trip around the sun.
Pelosi Claiming Biden Belongs on Mount Rushmore
After President Joe Biden malfunctioned at the late June debate, top Democrats orchestrated the soft coup that got rid one of the left’s leading obstacle to keeping the White House. Biden, we were told, was graciously stepping aside and “passing the torch” to defend democracy, or some such nonsense. The Democratic Party and the useful idiots in the accomplice media told us how selfless and noble the dementarian was for putting “patriotism above party,” as if they hadn’t just pushed the old man off the reelection train.
California Rep. Nancy Pelosi, whose fingerprints were all over the political hit job, stomped in stiletto heels on Biden’s political corpse as she insisted she had nothing to do with his ouster. More audaciously, The former speaker said Biden’s melon belonged next to Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and the first President Roosevelt.
“Such a consequential president of the United States, a Mount Rushmore kind of president of the United States,” Pelosi told CBS News’ Leslie Stahl. The Democrat also insisted Biden was “at the top of the game” when the leftist oligarchy that runs the DNC ran him out on a rail.
Andrew Johnson, Jimmy Carter, and James Buchanan are now feeling a lot better about their Rushmore odds.
Vibes and Brat Summer
Following Biden’s exit from the campaign, the geniuses at the helm of the Democrat Party astonishingly tapped an even worse candidate than the mumbler-in-chief. Kamala Harris, Biden’s immensely unpopular vice president, was the ultimate DEI pick in an administration that has bludgeoned to death the concept meritocracy — or basic competence, for that matter. But the bungling “border czar” was brazenly sold to the American voter as the “change candidate” in an election in which she was the incumbent. Harris, the Pravda Press declared, was a “joy” and good “vibes.” This fresh-faced 59-year-old was having a “brat summer” as the left’s new-and-improved candidate.
That’s what Charli XCX, the British pop star with the hot album and, according to no one, leading pundit of U.S. politics said. “Kamala IS brat,” Ms. XCX proclaimed. What did that mean? Nothing meaningful in the real world, of course, but in a celebrity-infatuated party and corporate media ruled by dimwits, brat means “that girl who is a little messy, and likes to party, and like maybe says some, like, dumb things sometimes … is very honest, is very blunt, a little bit volatile.” If that’s shorthand for idiot, well, cackling Kamala definitely was brat. CNN excitedly inhaled the manufactured buzz like a huffer of household cleaners. “Young women flood social media with pro-Harris ‘brat’ memes,” a CNN “battleground” piece declared. A union leader in Michigan said he’d “never seen energy like this.”
Turns out brat was a bust. The good vibes turned bad long before Nov. 5. It was all show and no substance. It was Kamala Harris. And it sure was stupid.
The Dems’ Stupid Dick Cheney Strategy
When the vibes could no longer cut it, Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the left’s flannel-clad everyman, dragged out neocon monsters Liz Cheney and her dad — the ultimate weapon of mass political destruction — Dick Cheney. Liz, of course, ran the sham show that was the J6 Committee. Coincidentally, lonesome Liz is no longer in the House of Representatives. Dick, once the Moveon.org movement’s most hated Republican, became the Harris/Walz campaign’s idea of a great American hero for endorsing the Democrat ticket and abhorring Trump like a good neocon does. Yeah, it made as much sense as a tampon dispenser in a men’s locker room.
“Who in God’s name is that endorsement gonna sway?” The Daily Show host Jon Stewart incredulously asked. “‘Well, I like the Democrats’ policy on child tax credits, but are they bombing enough Middle Eastern countries?’”
For Democrats, it was just like falling in love with Dick Cheney all over again.
“I don’t trust him, but you know, thank you for your support,” Crystal McLaughlin, a 53-year-old Greensboro, N.C. health care compliance worker, told the Associated Press, adding, “And hopefully your financial support.”
It was all transactional, with some on the left willing to embrace the unholy grace of the hated Cheney to sate their overpowering hatred for Donald Trump. George Conway, Rick Wilson, and the rest of the Lincoln Project schmucks loved it. The political ploy made their Tiki torches twinkle. Nobody else bought it, because it was stupid.
Republicans Act Like Losers After Big Win
The predicted red wave of 2022 finally arrived in 2024. Republicans racked up impressive victories, returning Trump to the White House, taking back the Senate, and holding on to the House. They boasted of their mandate.
“The American people want us to implement and deliver that America first agenda,” said House Speaker Mike Johnson, grinning ear to ear just days after the election. “And we have to do that while we have that energy and that excitement, beginning on the very first day of the Congress in the new year.”
Johnson and his fellow swamp creatures then promptly signaled that they intend to screw the American people and the America First agenda. It was business as usual, as the speaker presided over a 1,500-plus page monstrosity of a “continuing resolution” that looked a lot more like an omnibus bill. Under the ridiculously stupid threat of another government “shutdown,” the trough feeders piled on as much pork as they could, including a pay raise for themselves and an escape route from having to be insured under Obamacare. It was a bad bill. How bad? Lobbyists loved it. Johnson’s mess — and his bacon — was ultimately saved by Trump and incoming billionaire government cutter Elon Musk, who shamed the GOP-controlled House to head back to the table and come up with something a lot less awful. They did, paring the bill down to 100 pages and pulling out a lot of fat. But it was a bad sign for America first principles and an indicator that Trump’s ambitious agenda to shrink government and drain the swamp faces an uphill battle when weenie Republicans snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
“We won. @HouseGOP should start acting like it,” Rep. Keith Self, R-Texas, wrote on X amid the omnibus debacle.
How Much for Biden’s ‘Integrity?’
After four long years of soaring prices, dwindling income, rising interest rates, open borders, violent crime, expensive wars, deep division, censored speech, and government corruption, this is how cognitively diminished 82-year-old Joe Biden is. He recently told a holiday gathering of the DNC that America is better off today than it was when he took office nearly four years ago.
“The one thing I’ve always believed about public service, especially the presidency, is the importance of asking yourself, have you left the country in better shape than you found it? Today I can say without, with every fiber of my being, with all my heart, the answer to that question is a resounding yes,” Biden said.
Even a Chicago Bears fan would scoff at such delusion.
Speaking of delusion, Biden closed out the year by telling leftist MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas that when he ran for office he said he would do three things: “restore some integrity in the office, bring back a sense of focus on the needs of ordinary people, and try to unite the country.”
“So that’s what I’ve done, what I’ve tried to do,” the president said, just a few weeks after issuing an unprecedented pardon, giving his criminal son a get-out-of-jail-free card for the felonies he’s committed and the ones he may have committed over the past decade. Biden previously promised that he would not pardon or commute Hunter’s sentence. Biden lied, like he so often has done throughout his presidency and his long political career. His idea of integrity is as twisted as his definition of “unite.”
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